The present invention refers to a dynamic taxonomy process for browsing and retrieving information in large heterogeneous data bases.
Information retrieval on this type of database (for example those available on the Internet) is nowadays a slow task, sometimes impossible to realize due to the enormous amount of data to be analyzed, and that can be implemented with difficulty with the currently available tools. The following documents deal with the prior art in this field: Hearst M. et al: “Cat-a-cone: an interactive interface for specifying searched and viewing retrieval results using a large category hierarchy,” Annual International ACM-SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, US, New York, N.Y.: ACM, 1997, pages 246-255; EP-A-0 694 829 (XEROX Corp.); U.S. Pat. No. 5,644,740 (Kiuchi Itsuko); Gert Schmeltz Pedersen: “A browser for bibliographic information retrieval, based on an application of lattice theory,” Proceedings of the Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, US, New York, ACM, vol. CONF., 16, 1993, pages 270-279; and Story G. et al: “The Rightpages image-based electronic library for alerting and browsing,” Computer, US, IEEE Computer Society, Long Beach, Calif., US, vol. 25, no. 9, 1 Sep. 1992, pages 17-25.